#ANNYWAYS this was also a very fun one to do !!

[big-sib-graverot]

Mornin' Aandy~ Technically really early morning if this takes like, over an hour to write out, but early bird gets the worm yaknow?~

How'd you sleep? If I do fall asleep, I'd say it'd at least be a solid 6/10, maybe a 7 on a good day, but we all can't be winners~!

How ya feelin? You took care of yourself? Made your bed and get food or whatevs? I'm usually not like... a big stickler for these things, but I did check ins in the past, soo.. why not? Plus, I know you'll forget to do basic life things because you're too busy gaming or in your dumb relationships or talking with family or school, something that isn't me, so you need me to remind you! Because I'm simply the best ~ ♡

We'll probably be on the road in the mornin', or at night, who knows, but the place mom's bf rented is.. meh. At best. Not anything 5 star, and the beach was less (glass and cigs in the sand, having to rent to sit somewhere, and the water was brown. The seagulls were an inconvenience too.), but I'll try not to be so stingy, even though I should be when I deserve to be spoiled... I just dunno why he couldn't book a hotel for a weekend, I mean, we'd be leaving anyway! Whatevs. Thankfully momma is choosing the next vacation spot in July, so hope that'll be better.

Ooh, I'm so excited to see my pup again! We left her home alone the entire weekend, she must be so lonely and scared without me! I wanna give her extra love when I get home! She'd been a good girl, I know it! She's so cute and sweet and fluffy, I was worried sick about her, too..

And thankfully, the brat'll be sent home too! Thank fuck, because I was on the verge of just beating him up! What if I beat him up so hard he'd die and we could eat em~? That'd be fun, riiight?

Annywaaay, I'm glad you finally found out how much I want you! I was so close to just.. spelling it out, but you figured it out, I'm so proud of yoou! Mwwah! You're the smartest, Anndy~!

Annyways!! I don't want Tumblr to limit me, so I'll leave it here~ I love you, Andy! I love you so so so sooo much! Kayy? <33

– LeyLey. 🩷

Answering this now because I can't sleep.

Sounds like you had a shit vacation. I would've spoiled you to death, LeyLey.

You didn't get hurt by that glass or anything right?

If you did I'll cut up who ever put it there.

Also I'd prefer not to eat anymore people.

At least the ones you cook anyways.

Also, Hey! I do basic things!

I did skip lunch because I was gaming..

But that's irrelevant.

I bet your dog was a very good girl though! She deserves lots of pets when you do end up getting home.

And I love you too LeyLey. ♡

[p2ep]

whenever someone says my name to me it lowkey freaks me out like ?!?!?! thats me????. like lowkey terrifying... i get this effect when close friends say my name so like.. its kinda physically painful when customers say my name?? like what the fuck how do you know my name thats so personal 

[starswake--archived]

Hi ♡~

UHH idek what to describe for this playlist either

Me and all my friends are sad (stay happy - au/ra)

For my sweetheart, the melancholic (biko - bloc party)

I don't want you to know how I’m feeling (smile - ukuletea)

I call you one time, two time, three time, I can't wait no more (fuck i'm lonely - bilmuri)

Am I seductive? (cologne - beabadoobee)

[thebibliomancer]

Song of the Dark Crystal liveblog pt 1

Song of the Dark Crystal by J.M. Lee because its best boy Kylan’s time

Last time in Shadows of the Dark Crystal, Naia set off on a journey to clear her brother’s name of treason against the Skeksis. Naia teamed up with best boy Kylan, butted heads with Tavra, and met a cool Archer. She eventually discovered that the Crystal of Truth had become darkened and was driving many creatures of Thra fantasy rabid. And that the Skeksis weren’t just to blame but were also drinking Gelfling and super wanted to drink Naia and Gurjin because twins. Naia and Kylan manage to escape but Gurjin and Tavra get left behind.

=(

So it was less than an auspicious coming of age story for Naia but she did grow her wings. That’s something.

Chapter 1

Having arrived at Stone-in-the-Wood at the end of the last book, Naia finally meets Rian. It’s awkward for everyone.

Kylan (now the POV guy) and Naia head into the woods part of Stone-in-the-Woods to meet with Rian’s sister Mytha.

She’s a fun character. Very bubbly and full of questions. She’s got the kind of energy that Naia’s experiences in the previous book thoroughly ground out of her

=(

I feel like I’m going to be feeling that a lot.

Annyway. Mythra. Interesting name. Only one letter off from Mithra, although who is to say that means anything. I wonder if the thra in Mithra is supposed to be like the planet Thra thra.

A lot of Sudden POV Guy Kylan’s thoughts are worrying about how messed up Naia has to be from their experiences last book. He’s a good, worried friend.

Like, Mythra tells them their experiences sound amazing and brave and Kylan reflects that he and Naia are both thinking that running away from the Skeksis doesn’t feel amazing or brave.

There’s also a good bit where Naia asked Mythra if she believes Rian despite him being branded a lying traitor by the Skeksis.

With no apparent hesitation, Mythra answers “Of course I believe Rian. He’s my brother!”

Bit of a shame that the POV has shifted from Naia because I’m sure she’d have Thoughts about that considering how much of her own journey was filled with doubts about Gurjin and feeling like maybe she didn’t know him.

Mythra is younger than Naia though. And Rian is her older brother vs twin. But still, contrast.

When they reach where they’re supposed to be meeting Rian, they find him being slightly trampled by a Horner.

Another Thra critter! A Horner has green-fur, whorled horns, and a clubbed tail. Apparently they’re diggers and rooters, as later in the scene Rian will complain that he keeps running into Darkened Horners because they dig up the dark crystal veins and are too dumb to look away. I’m personally imagining a horrifying combination of boar, ... ram, and ankylosaurus. I love Thra’s fauna.

Kylan worries that Naia will try to dreamfast with the Darkened Horner which could be dangerous as messed up as her emotions are so he asks her not to. She agrees and instead flies right in front of the angered creature to distract it from Rian.

Thaaaaats Naia.

“Get out of here,” Naia ordered. “While I have it’s attention!”

“I said I don’t need your help! “ Rian spat back, though he took the opportunity to move closer to his spear.

Geez, Rian. You’re not making a great first impression.

But the Horner is laser focused on Naia now, even when Rian spears it in the butt. It charges at Naia and she manages to dodge for a bit until she makes a mistake and ends up in a bad position. But Neech the Shoulder Eel pops out of Naia’s hair and jumps into the Horner’s fur, presumably trying to gnaw it to death since Neech’s teeth can’t break the Horner’s hide. But the Horner drives itself into exhaustion trying to scrape Neech off against a tree and passes out.

Or, as Naia hopes, the creature heard her plea to let go of the darkness even without dreamfasting. That’d be nice too.

With that problem sorted out, Naia and Rian can actually formally meet. Although Rian already recognizes Naia as Gurjin’s sister what with the twin thing.

“You’re Naia. Gurjin’s twin.”

The hardened voice was Rian’s. He was tall for a Gelfling, with olive skin and dark eyes. His thick dark brown hair was tousled and wild, broken by a single streak of blue above his right eye. His face was young and kind, though his eyes were weary and his lips were pressed in a tired line.

“And you’re Rian,” Naia said.

They had heard his name so often since they had begun their journey. In fact, at many times, his name was almost all they’d had for guidance. To finally meet him in person had seemed impossible, yet here they were.

This is a good moment because, yeah, Rian has to be built up into quite a figure in their minds by this point but lets back up a second!

His thick dark brown hair was tousled and wild, broken by a single streak of blue above his right eye.

Excuse me!

Did Rian dye a streak of hair? Or is this natural? Do Gelfling naturally get anime hair? This is so alien to the image I have of Rian!

Anyway! Rian asks after Gurjin and Naia pretty flatly tells him that Gurjin didn’t make it. Kylan speculates its her way of ripping the band-aid off but either way it leads to an awkward silence as none of them can bring themselves to say what needs to be said.

So Mythra says it for them once she finishes dressing the passed out Horner’s wounds.

She says that they need to figure out what to do about the Skeksis and then shoves Naia and Rian at each other and tells them to dreamfast so they can make a plan.

Rian wipes his hand on his tunic before offering it, which is the only time someone has done that and now I’m wondering if its SOP for when you’re not in a big frantic situation and have time to think ‘oh wow my hand might be dirty/clammy.’

I’m still fascinated at the etiquette of dreamfasting.

Kylan is still mostly thinking about what Naia is thinking about.

Kylan watched Naia, feeling a pinch of protectiveness. If she had not felt well enough to dreamfast with the horner, was she really in a safe place to open her heart to another Gelfling, to share what had broken it? They had heard Rian’s name many times, and sought him for days, but he was still a stranger. An ally, but not a friend.

When Naia glanced at Kylan in hesitation, that was all he needed to know. He stepped forward and offered his own hand.

“Naia’s heart is broken now,” he said. “But I was there, and she told me what she saw. I can’t give you her memories, but I can give you mine and my memory of her tale.”

Aww, what a good friend Kylan is!

Rian is indifferent to the hesitation and instantly agrees to dreamfast with Kylan instead.

Kylan characterizes blue-streak Rian in an interesting way.

He didn’t seem to care either way, all action and little emotion.

This is a drastically different take from the show Rian who cared so much all the time that it hurt.

Kylan does speculate that Rian’s own experiences might be the cause for this. Like that he might be sort of shut down, emotionally.

Still, its interesting. We didn’t get to know Rian very much at all in the first book, except secondhand. And there were differences. He was able to delay reacting to the Skeksis draining his girlfriend instead of having a shocked outburst right away. So right away its a Rian who is less impulsively emotional about things.

Although the first book also characterized Rian as serious and organized compared to Gurjin being more lackadaisical. While show Rian was a goofus and Gurjin was a bit of a straight man to his and Mira’s antics.

It’s just interesting to see such differences in Rian since he was one of the characters we got to know best in the show.

Anyway, Rian and Kylan start to dreamfast.

And it occurs to me that another reason why Kylan volunteered to do it in Naia’s place is that it would be a very boring upcoming chapter if Kylan just sat around watching two other people dreamfast. He has POV responsibilities now.

[nothingneverforever]

The Good Place (2016)

I chose to start watching this only because I was at a very low point in my life in terms of facing a dearth of TV-derived entertainment, having just finished Virgin River (2019) and Sweet Magnolias (2020). Both Virgin and Sweet are not what you'd call .. uh... productions of any real calibre or value or perhaps worth at all, like you can be certain that no niches were filled when they were realsed into the Netflix ether... But they also happen to be epic masterpieces by sheer fact of how banal and predictable and PG and saccharine and inconsequential they are, the best of the suburban vanilla Hallmark Movie genre, and basically they rock af ok?? and so when I finished both first seasons of the two series I was left empty and thirsty. And it was in this lostness that I turned to The Good Place, thinking it would be as enriching in it's simplicity, as palatable in it's shallow distraction, qualities I generally look for in the fodder to keep my eyes engaged on something that isn't the clock when I do my daily evening indoor cardio.

So maybe I should first set the stage by establishing that I simply fucking hated this series lol. I couldn't get past episode 12 (I know, this makes it sound like i already gave it way more time than it deserved, which is the truth) of the first season, because once I decided I'd had enough, it was really fucking enough and I couldn't give it one more second.

As always, here's my shoddily written premise of the series; I don't want to put much effort into capturing it's essence well because idgaf about this dumb show seriously fucking hate it lol but anyway: Eleanor (Kristen Bell) dies on earth, and goes to 'The Good Place', where all souls who were much more good than bad while living on earth go to upon their death, as opposed to The Bad Place, where the bad people go. There’s some mathematical calculation for this heaven and hell allocation basically. So the good place (i can't be bothered to capitalize it every time i type it anymore lol sorry), is run by a head architect who has designed and is in charge of the neighbourhood our characters live in, and he has a female robot assistant, Janet, who is the omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient right-hand lady who can also be called up by any good place resident who has any question for her, anytime. Anyway Eleanor, after dying on earth, was actually sent to the good place by accident, because she was actually a completely irredeemable asshole but due to some dumb boring never-happened-before error, she was sent to the good place instead of the bad place where she actually was meant to end up. Here she makes a small group of friends, some to whom she is eventually honest about the fact that she does not actually belong in the good place, and it is because of this incorrect placement that the good place is crumbling and its inner workings are going haywire etc and everyone suffers from the consequences. So blah blah blah soon we find out that it is not just her, but also some other guy who is here by mistake, and so blah blah blah etc yupp

So here are the things that suck about this show:

So there’s this other guy who also doesn't belong in the good place and who was also sent there by accident, his name is Jason okay but umm it's complicated because the person he was mistaken as (and the actual 'good person' who was intended to be sent to the good place while Jason was meant to be directed to the bad place) is named Jian Yu, a Taiwanese monk. Jason however is a Filipino-American from Florida and I guess his character is meant to be a stereotypical 'White trash' character, but it's meant to be funny or some shit so we aren't meant to be deeply affected by fact that his life was fucking sad, like how his small-town dreams were meant to be comedic relief for us to laugh at how pathetic he is when ... i dunno, I feel very uncomfortable making a joke out of real-life situations that umm aren't funny at all idk whatever... Oh also the weird (dumb/shitty/lame/thoughtless) thing about the show is how even once it is revealed that Jason is in fact his Jason-y, oblivious, infantile, one-dimensionally-tropey self, the characters who know the truth still continue to call him Jianyu throughout...? But like.... he's not Jianyu lol?

So anyway, Jason is characterised quite disturbingly to be honest as an extremely immature dudebro, to the extent that one could call him child-like. In his unhappiness at being stuck in this weird world where he can't be himself and has to pretend to be Jianyu most of the time (which involves being a complete ascetic as well as silent because the real Jianyu had apparently taken a lifelong oath of silence), Jason latches on to Janet the robot assistant. He says she is the only one who has been kind to him, etc etc etc, and begins ummmm, falling in love with her. But because he's painted as a literal baby with absolutely no rational or critical thinking skills, him falling in love with her is meant to be uhh earnest and sweet or at the very least inconsequential and jokey I guess? But like... this isn't funny...? Not when sex robots are a real thing and will probably lead to the abuse, violation, murder of millions of women in time to come because men will be so used to putting their penises into awfully, scarily 'life-like' dolls whose limbs have been programmed to move and who can even utter words of affirmation to their degenerate users that actual human females will no doubt bear the brunt of being expected to perform in life and in bed similarly to our robotic counterparts...? Yea so the good place disturbingly first makes us almost forced to feel some endearment toward Jason for finding a kindred "soul" in robot Janet, glad that he finally has "someone" to "talk to" (quotation marks cos once again she's a fucking robot), and it's all very "pure" and "wholesome" at first because again, he's portrayed as a fucking kid (one piece I read describes the character as "a sweet ding-dong human"). And then suddenly, about one or two episodes after they fall in love or whatever, Jason says:

You guys have fun. This is me and Janet's honeymoon, so we're gonna go try and figure out how to have sex.

Yeah umm so once again, in case any of you forgot, Janet's a fucking robot. If I use a scale of human consciousness out of 100 where a regular human's sense of self and awareness and independent thinking and authonomy and whatever else makes us human is at 100, Janet is probably at .... 10? at most? So yea.... i guess rape jokes are okay these days? I dunno? Literally how the fuck were there 3 entire seasons of this dumb show after this

Anyway when I attempted to put in *some* effort before I gave up, realising this show wasn't worth my precious weekend downtime, I googled Jason and Janet's relationship to see if there were any other similar voices of dissent but umm apparently, according to the headlines of articles, this is instead public opinion:

The Unlikely Romance of The Good Place’s Janet and Jason

Why Janet And Jason Are The Good Place's Ultimate Love Story, According To The Actors

How Janet and Jason broke the infinite love mold on The Good Place

From these disgusting articles, here are some choice quotes by the actors and crew involved themselves:

And the fact that this should not happen but it does makes it very special. We think that their relationship is really sweet. There's something very innocent and real about their love even though that is insane

Yeah, I always talk about this whenever I get the question, “How does Janet and Jason work?” And my response is always — and I’ve thought about this a lot — Jason is slowly becoming a little bit more aware and intelligent. He’s evolving a little bit, and through Jason, Janet is able to become more emotionally intelligent. She’s feeling these things, whether it be good or bad, through Jason because that’s what Jason is. He’s all these different emotions that he can’t tame, and Janet’s learning that. They’re kind of evolving.

Okay so perhaps I should clarify that Janet the robot goes through a couple of 'deaths' in which she comes back as a rebooted version, and supposedly more 'human' each time. So yeah I guess it's okay to have sex with robots if they actually become 0.0000001% more human-like each time they come back to life though!!!!! Sorry for overreacting guys!!!!!

Seriously though how the fuck are they even using the word 'romance' in good conscience to describe the 'relationship'

Actually as I'm writing this I'm reminded of this video by Pop Culture Detective on youtube, titled "Abduction as Romance". Jonathan the host/video creator goes through various movies through history and from contemporary cinema of this unbelievably damaging and disturbing trope, where women are shown to eventually fall in love with men who have essentially, in some way or another, abducted them, annyway here it is if anyone's interested 

I’m calling up this video because in the shows used as examples in Jonathan’s thesis, the female characters fall in love with the men just because the men happen to be the only choice they have. Okay I actually only managed to get through a quarter of the video because it was too disturbing and too awful to think about how frequently such plot points are used till today and how so much of the shitty love we see on screen is completely abusive in nature (he’s also made another video called Stalking for Love which I’m sure is as eye-opening, i haven’t watched it cos i don’t need to lol, i’m already woke thanks), but anyway the bit that I did manage to watch does remind me of this stupid love story from The Good Place that we’re supposed to be moved by. We’re seriously supposed to believe that Janet, through her reboots and whatever awakenings of consciousness she supposedly has, also has feelings for Jason just because he’s the only pathetic dumbass immature enough to think that he has feelings for her because she’s the only person who’s willing to listen and talk to him properly? When ummmm she’s only listening to you because she’s programmed to...?

Honestly I can't be bothered to talk about freaking Janet and Jason anymore

There are other things that suck about this dumb show

I don't know what kind of character development Eleanor (protagonist) goes through in the seasons that succeed that I shall never be audience to, but she remains unlikable in almost every way in season 1. This is even though the entire premise of the plot is that she learns to become a better person with each day, struggling to distance herself from her past (on earth) where she was every caricature of a selfish, cruel, demeaning, unlikable person ever. The few and short flashbacks we get to her earthly past are so annoyingly annoying that it made it almost impossible for me to continue to care for this charatcer her in her afterlife. I know, being in the profession that i am, i should have a great deal more empathy for her and where she's coming from (and i would if the show was not so fucking shitty), so i'm not hating on the fact that she was such a bad person, more so that the creators of the show did little to give us anything real to hold on to at all. Between boringly unreal dialogue, stilted acting typical of American sitcoms, overly defined character traits again typical of dated, unchallenging and unsophisticated American sitcoms, I honestly can't understand how on earth this is rated 97% on rotten tomatoes... I mean I guess if I actually read the reviews I'd understand but hehe I'm not about that open-minded, balanced POV narrative okie? :)

----------

Updates: Haha so ummm eventually I was too bored / curious so I decided to give this show like it’s fourth chance or something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire series and yes I cried as fuck and yes this series made me feel many feels and no I shall neither take back anything of what I said above nor clarify how or what made me change my opinion on it nor elaborate on why I ended up rather enjoying it :-) bye bye